DOGE checks? Elon Musk claims 'progress' has been made, but says it isn't his decision
(NEXSTAR) — Waiting for a stimulus check funded by the cuts the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) says it's making? It could be a while.
While speaking in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Sunday, Elon Musk was asked whether he had any update on "DOGE checks" being sent out to Americans.
He noted that though it is "somewhat up to the Congress and maybe the president as to whether specific checks are cut," reducing "wasteful spending" will leave the economy "better off."
He claimed this would be the case "whether a check is cut or not."
"As government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced, the tax by inflation is reduced," he tells the crowd, as seen in video shared by USA TODAY. "So one way or another, you will effectively be better off if resources in the United States are not wasted."
"We've made a lot of progress but there's still a tremendous amount of work to do," Musk continued.
President Donald Trump and Musk have been teasing the idea of turning DOGE's reported savings into stimulus checks for Americans for months.
James Fishback, the CEO of investment firm Azoria, has been credited with spurring the idea of sending $5,000 "DOGE dividend" checks to Americans. He told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that the dividend program “is totally reasonable” and would motivate citizens to report wasteful spending to DOGE, with larger potential payouts tied to greater savings found.
Trump also suggested using the savings to pay down the federal debt in mid-February. That's in line with Fishback's initial proposal of turning 20% of DOGE's savings into stimulus checks and using the rest to pay down the national debt.
Receiving a $5,000 check would rely on DOGE cutting enough to reach its $2 trillion goal — a goal that Musk previously said was the "best case outcome." As of Tuesday, DOGE claims it has saved $140 billion (though some of its reported cuts have been questioned), equating to less than $870 per taxpayer.
While DOGE says the savings would benefit an estimated 161 million individual federal taxpayers, it's possible that not every American would receive a check, should they become a reality.
The checks, under Fishback's proposal, would only go to American households that pay income taxes. As NewsNation previously reported, roughly 40% of households did not pay federal income taxes in 2022 (this is typically due to a limited or lack of income).
Some, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have also spoken out against cutting checks for Americans.
“But if you think about our core principles, right, fiscal responsibility is what we do as conservatives," Johnson said in late February. "That’s our brand. And we have a $36 trillion federal debt, we have a giant deficit that we’re contending with. I think we need to pay down the credit card, right?”
Preston Brashers, a tax policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called "stimmy checks" a "bad idea" around the same time. He warned that such payments would lead to inflation returning "with a vengeance."
Fishback previously argued, however, that if the checks are "deficit-financed" and funded by "DOGE-driven savings," they would not be inflationary.
Others said the payments may not even be large enough to make an impact.
“I can’t imagine they’d be inflationary because I can’t imagine they’d be big enough,’’ Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Associated Press.